Scholars and policymakers have called for greater attention to understanding the causes of and solutions to improved prisoner reentry outcomes, resulting in renewed attention to a factor—prison visitation—long believed to reduce recidivism. However, despite the theoretical arguments advanced on its behalf and increased calls for evidence-based policy, there remains little credible empirical research on whether a beneficial relationship between visitation and recidivism in fact exists. Against that backdrop, this study employs propensity score matching analyses to examine whether visitation of various types and in varying amounts, or “doses,” is in fact negatively associated with recidivism outcomes among a cohort of released prisoners. The analyses suggest that visitation has a small to modest effect in reducing recidivism of all types, especially property offending, and that the effects may be most pronounced for spouse or significant other visitation. We discuss the implications of the findings for rese...

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Prison Visitation and Recidivism

Recent research suggests that children of prisoners are at risk for a range of adverse outcomes throughout their lives. However, there is almost no information about how many children prisoners hav...

The cycle of punishment: Social exclusion of prisoners and their children

Drawing on survey data collected from 396 visitors to inmates at a medium-security prison, this research examines the experience of visiting inmates from the visitor's perspective. Data include vis...

Going to Prison: A Prison Visitation Program:

Objectives:This article examines the impact of distal prison placements on inmate social ties. Specifically, we test whether distance adversely affects inmates by reducing their access to family and friends and then test whether the effects are amplified for minorities and inmates who come from socially disadvantaged areas.Methods:These questions are assessed using a sample of inmates that includes all convicted felony offenders admitted to a single state’s prison system over a three-year period.Results:We find that inmates vary greatly in the distance from which they are placed from home and that Latinos are placed more distally than Blacks and Whites. We also find that distance and community disadvantage adversely affect the likelihood of inmate visitation. Although the adverse effect of distance appears to be similar across racial and ethnic groups, a difference exists among Blacks—for this group, high levels of community disadvantage amplify the adverse effects of distance.Conclusions:This study ident...

Spatial Distance, Community Disadvantage, and Racial and Ethnic Variation in Prison Inmate Access to Social Ties

Scholarship has shown that visitation helps individuals maintain social ties during imprisonment, which, in turn, can improve inmate behavior and reduce recidivism. Not being visited can result in collateral consequences and inequality in punishment. Few studies, however, have explored the factors associated with visitation. This study uses data on Florida inmates to identify individual- and community-level factors that may affect visitation. Consistent with expectations derived from prior theory and research, the study finds that inmates who are older, Black, and who have been incarcerated more frequently experience less visitation. In addition, inmates who come from areas with higher incarceration rates and higher levels of social altruism experience more visits. Unexpectedly, however, sentence length and economic disadvantage are not associated with visitation. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Who Gets Visited in Prison? Individual- and Community-Level Disparities in Inmate Visitation Experiences

The number of visits and the number of visitors of inmates in a men's prison were more numerous with those inmates whose visitors were primarily family members. Visitation was positively correlated with proximity to the prison, which means the home was in Nevada Some suggestions are provided.

Correlates of Visitation in a Men's Prison

12 Jewish inmates scored significantly higher than 1497 non-Jewish inmates on a measure of intelligence, the Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices. Interview findings indicated that the present Jewish inmates were never very involved in the practice of Judaism and were not strongly integrated into their local Jewish communities.

http://prx.sagepub.com/content/71/2/513.full.pdf

Penny A. Jackson

Papers

Correlates of Visitation in a Men's Prison

Jewish inmates: an atypical prison group